Year's Best Hardcore Horror: Volume 2

This year brings 22 more in-your-face stories that break boundaries and trash taboos, transgressive tales you can't "unread" (as Chuck Palahniuk says). Some of the stories you'll find here are loaded with very graphic descriptions of violence, sex, and depravities, while others may contain only one shocking moment of brutality. In others, the hardcore aspect may be less graphic and subtler than you might expect. Some of these quieter tales offer the listener some time to recover from the more disturbing ones preceding.

Dark Hollow

Something very strange is happening in LeHorn's Hollow. Eerie, piping music is heard late at night, and mysterious fires have been spotted deep in the woods. Women are vanishing without a trace overnight, leaving behind husbands and families. When up-and-coming novelist Adam Senft stumbles upon an unearthly scene, it plunges him and the entire town into an ancient nightmare. Folks say the woods in LeHorn's Hollow are haunted, but what waits there is far worse than any ghost.

Family Business

After the death of her mother, Bobbie Jean finds herself living with her aunt and uncle at their rural farm. Without many options, she begins to sell her body to anyone to turn a quick buck. But when she discovers Uncle Levi's dirty secret in the barn, Bobby Jean must decide whether to join the family business.

Lucifer's Children

A family tragedy thrusts Amanda into the foster care of the Henning family at the start of her senior year of high school. Amanda soon learns that the prestigious private school isn't what it seems. Monarch Preparatory School for Girls is a place plagued by rampant teen pregnancy, promiscuity, and violence.

Berkley Street: Berkley Street Series, Book 1

Shane Ryan returns to Nashua and the childhood memories that drove him to join the Marines. After a prolonged legal battle with his aunt and uncle, Shane has possession of the family home where his parents disappeared over 20 years ago. The house, a monstrous castle filled with ghosts and secrets, is more alive than its inhabitants.

Tim Miller's Hand of God Trilogy

Tim Miller's first ever trilogy with Charlie, the preacher who moonlights as a serial killer, is now in one complete volume. Listen to all three entries in this complete set. This volume contains: The Hand of God, Revenge of the Three, and The Hand of Hell.

Father of Lies: A Darkly Disturbing Occult Horror Trilogy Series, Book 1

Ruby is the most violently disturbed patient ever admitted to Drummersgate Asylum, high on the bleak moors of northern England. With no improvement after two years, Dr. Jack McGowan finally decides to take a risk and hypnotizes her - with terrifying consequences. A horrific dark force is now unleashed on the entire medical team, as each in turn attempts to unlock Ruby's shocking and sinister past. Who is this girl? And how did she manage to survive such unimaginable evil?

Twisted 50: 50 Contemporary Shockers from the Most Terrifying New Writers of Horror

Twisted 50 is a deliciously dark slice of contemporary horror literature. Reading it is like attending a late night secret banquet where you know each course will serve up something unexpected, forbidden, and unforgettably chilling. Take your private seat now for 50 luscious courses of terror, from 50 of the strongest voices in modern horror.

Beware

Using ancient black magic, a dangerous, vindictive maniac is made all-powerful by his ability to become invisible. Raping and murdering his way around the States, he is biding his time before fulfilling his one desire - to get even with the high school belle who rejected him years before.

House Infernal: Infernal Series, Book 3

When Venetia Barlow began work at St. John's Priory, she expected a quiet summer of drudgery and boredom. But almost immediately she is haunted by lurid desires and visions of a city filled with monsters -monsters who know her name. Is the house really a place of meditation, or is it a temple of abominations? Venetia learns the truth when a long-dead priest gives her an unspeakable message direct from the howling, blood-drenched streets of Hell.

Ghost Walk

Halloween is coming, and a new haunted attraction is open for business in LeHorn's Hollow. Folks will come from miles around to walk down the spooky trail and get scared witless. But there's one thing the owners of the ghost walk haven't counted on. There really is something waiting in the woods - a vast, ancient evil whose hunger threatens to consume all life on Earth. Soon, the unsuspecting customers will pay their money and get in line...to die.

Brother

Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it's served them well so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don't knock on their door. Which is a good thing, seeing what's buried in the Morrows' backyard. But 19-year-old Michael Morrow isn't like the rest of his family. He doesn't take pleasure in the screams that echo through the trees.

Return to Hell Texas

Many years ago, a group of travelers took a doomed trip through Hell, Texas. Not long after their fateful journey, the town was discovered by Texas DPS Trooper Garrett Parker. Garrett was promoted to Texas Ranger as a result of his heroics. Over a decade has passed since that fateful day. Yet something terrible is happening again.

The Complex

There was no warning. No chance to escape. They came suddenly. Naked. Bloodthirsty. Sadistic. They descended upon the Pine Village Apartment Complex, relentlessly torturing and killing anyone they could find. Fearing for their lives, the residents of the complex must band together. Eleven strangers. The only thing they have in common is the unstoppable horde that wants to kill them. If they are to make it through the night, they must fight back.

Flesh Gothic

Hildreth House isn't like other mansions. One warm night in early spring, 14 people entered Hildreth House's labyrinthine halls to partake in diabolical debauchery. When the orgy was over, the slaughter began. The next morning, 13 of the revelers were found naked and butchered. Dismembered. Mutilated. But the 14th body was never found. The screams have faded and the blood has dried, but the house remains - watching. Now five very special people have dared to enter the infamous house of horrors. Who - or what - awaits them?

Blister

They call her Blister. She's a hideously disfigured 23-year-old woman, living in a shed next to her father's house, hidden away from the world. Jason Tray is a successful cartoonist, banished to his agent's lakeside cabin for a few days of mandatory rest and relaxation. One night, while hanging out with a couple of the locals at a dive bar, he takes them up on their offer to go "see Blister," having no idea what they're talking about.

The Secret of Ventriloquism

Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism, named the Best Fiction Book of 2016 by Rue Morgue Magazine, heralds the arrival of a significant new literary talent. With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, and Bruno Schulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Padgett's work explores the mystery of human suffering, the agony of personal existence, and the ghastly means by which someone might achieve salvation from both.

Webcam: A Novel of Terror

Someone is stalking webcam models. He lurks in the untouchable recesses of the black web. He's watching you. Right now. When watching is no longer enough, he comes calling. He's the last thing you'll ever see before the blood gets in your eyes.

NecroWitch

Sable Reyes is a witch, but not just any old witch. She has the gruesome ability to speak to the dead by manipulating organs. Living on her own, she must do what she can to survive. Often that involves using her gruesome form of necromancy to get information for whomever can pay her price. That is, until another crime boss comes along. This one with an ability so powerful and frightening even Sable may have met her match. As the bodies pile up, these dark powerhouses head for a collision course that could lead to their mutual destruction.

Haunted House

At Butler House a series of grisly murders over a century have led many to believe it's haunted. To one scientist it's the perfect place for an experiment in fear. Eight people, each chosen because they lived through a terrifying experience, are offered a million dollars to spend one night at Butler House. They can take whatever they want with them - religious items, survival gear, and weapons. All they need to do is last the night.

Swan Song

Facing down an unprecedented malevolent enemy, the government responds with a nuclear attack. America as it was is gone forever, and now every citizen - from the President of the United States to the homeless on the streets of New York City - will fight for survival. In a wasteland born of rage and fear, populated by monstrous creatures and marauding armies, earth's last survivors have been drawn into the final battle between good and evil, that will decide the fate of humanity.

Seed

With nothing but the clothes on his back - and something horrific snapping at his heels - Jack Winter fled his rural Georgia home when he was just a boy. Watching the world he knew vanish in a trucker’s rearview mirror, he thought he was leaving an unspeakable nightmare behind forever. Now, years later, the bright new future he’s built suddenly turns pitch black, as something fiendishly familiar looms dead ahead. Surviving a violent car crash seems like a miracle for Jack’s family, but Jack knows there’s nothing divine about it.

We're All Mad Here: Tim Miller's Twisted Tales, Book 1

We're All Mad Here is the first in Tim Miller's serial using fairy tales, myths and legends to tell his own twisted stories. In each installment, he will visit a new world we've all grown up with through stories and films and he will rip that version to shreds turning each universe into a place of blood, sex, gore and mayhem. Forget anything and everything you thought you knew about fables and fairy tales. You have not heard them until you're begun We're All Mad here.

Publisher's Summary

A group of misfit teens who call themselves "The Dark Ones" make an abandoned house their hangout. But the demon they've inadvertently awakened possesses them one by one, using them to create a reign of unholy terror.

The narrator was the worse part for me. He was too old for the book. It needed a younger narrator. I like Nick Podehl for this. He read The Beginning of the End: Apocalypse Z and had a great voice for a young man.<br/>

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

no

Any additional comments?

I like Bryan Smith. I appreciate that he always writes as an East Tennessean which I am as well. This wasnt one of my favorites by him. The freakshow holds that title